


Unit Offline

by lick



Series: No Easy Distance [3]
Category: The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Genre: Alternate POV, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Dr. Mensah Has Feelings, Dr. Mensah is Jacked, Dr. Mensah's POV, Dr. Mensah: Intrepid Galactic Explorer, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29449041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lick/pseuds/lick
Summary: SecUnit's camera went dark as it hit the ground. Its feed stopped. The last line it had transmitted was: "Unit Offline. Temporary shutdown."She had to get in there. She had to save it.--Or: Dr. Mensah's POV during chapters four and five ofAll Systems Red.
Series: No Easy Distance [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146596
Comments: 61
Kudos: 103





	1. Temporary Shutdown

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you once again to FlipSpring for beta reading. 
> 
> Enjoy the story!

Ayda was clenching her fists so hard the joints ached.

After their SecUnit had advised them to fall back once it had stumbled upon the scene of a massacre, they’d retreated to the big hopper. Pin-Lee, Overse, and Ayda kept their environmental suits on, just in case they needed to get back out there, so they were each still on separate mics.

Pin-Lee had taken her gloves off to take over control of the hopper’s feed from Ratthi, and Ayda and Overse followed suit just because the gloves were uncomfortable. At least, that was why Ayda did it. She was nervous and it made her palms sweaty. The rubbery material of the enviro-gloves stuck to her skin and itched from the sweat.

Ratthi had SecUnit’s helmet camera feed pulled up on the main display. A sidebar next to it ran in real time with the unit’s analysis and observations from its feed. Most of the information was useless to her, but Ayda tried to keep an eye on it, too.

As it searched through the habitat, it kept stumbling upon more dead bodies in the corridors. They weren’t fresh. The blood had dried.

Their SecUnit had made it through the first habitat, and it opened the hatch to the hallway that connected it to the next habitat. Ratthi made a kind of strangled noise when yet another sprawled body came into view. SecUnit froze, and a flurry of data rushed by on the sidebar, too quick for Ayda to parse.

In her feed, SecUnit said: _It_ _’s a trap. The rogue SecUnits are on the other side. They are close enough to hear my comm. I need to keep them waiting there and distracted in order to make a stealth approach. Get on the comm, and tell me to wait for you._

Ayda acknowledged the feed message, and then activated her comm. She kept her finger on the control. She said loudly, “SecUnit, I want you to hold your position until I get there,” and disengaged as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

The unit’s answer, “Yes, Dr. Mensah,” was almost drowned out by the others protesting.

“There is no fucking way you’re going in there alone,” Pin-Lee snarled.

“That’s right,” Overse said. “If you’re going in, someone’s going with you.”

If Ayda was a different sort of leader, she could’ve reminded them that because she was in charge of the survey, what she said goes. Instead, she rolled her eyes and pointed to the display surface, and the others whipped their heads back around. They fell quiet.

SecUnit had closed the hatch again, and was on the move through the habitat. In a corridor outside the mess, it climbed up a ladder and popped a hatch, climbing onto the roof.

She said, “It said that there was a trap at the other end of the corridor. It’s trying to sneak up on them.”

She didn’t say ‘sneak up on the rogue SecUnits’ _._ SecUnit had seemed pretty sure that was what had happened here. To be honest, Ayda’s opinion ever since it had found the dead SecUnit outside the Hub had been somewhere along the lines of, ‘Oh shit what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?!’

She watched the unit’s perspective as it walked slowly across the curving roofs of the habitat domes. Its boots had to be magnetized, because it kept them on the metal structural beams and not the synthetic plating.

Ayda had seen rogue SecUnits in media, of course. Most adventure serials had at least one episode or arc that featured them. Ayda understood why, at a conceptual level. Putting bits of a human brain in a nonhuman body was an idea that made everyone, corporate or not, a little squeamish, even though over the last century it had become depressingly normal. Of course, there was also the fact that while the average person living in the Corporation Rim was far more likely to encounter a ComfortUnit than a SecUnit, the situations where one found themselves face-to-face with a SecUnit were usually far worse for everyone involved. Prisons. Forced labor installations. Or, in her case, frightening meetings with corporate supervisors using it as a threat.

The built-in guns thing was also probably a factor.

It frightened her, seeing the work of rogue SecUnits like this. She wanted SecUnit to be free when they brought it home, she didn’t want it to still be beholden to human orders. But was the governor module that forced it to obey also what made it care about humans at all? Without it, or its influence, would SecUnit decide it’d be better off with them dead? She didn’t want to think it. She felt like she was wrong. But she had no evidence to base that opinion off. of All she had was her gut inclination.

On the display, SecUnit crested the third habitat, walking carefully down its slope. Ratthi made a sympathetic noise of discomfort at the steep angle.

Overse said softly, “What do we do if it… loses?”

Ayda shook her head, banishing the thought. “It doesn’t matter,” Ayda said, “Not yet. If it happens, we’ll decide then.”

Pin-Lee’s expression was pinched, yet determined. “It won’t,” she said confidently.

SecUnit crossed onto the second habitat dome and opened the roof hatch. It dropped into the DeltFall Group’s security ready room. It appraised the space, which was larger and furnished with three cubicles, just like DeltFall’s specs had said. One SecUnit was down, the two rogues were left. After a quick search of the space, SecUnit moved on. Next it found Medical, which was the site of yet more bloody murders. Further down the hall, in front of a curve, SecUnit stopped. The tiny drones moved slowly ahead, peeking around the turn.

Things happened very quickly then. SecUnit bolted down the hall, so quick Ayda couldn’t make out any details. The sidebar feed was speeding by again with a flood of information. When the projectile weapon fire started, Ayda clapped her hands on her helmet, over her ears out of impulse, even though it did no good because the noise was playing inside her helmet.

The sound made the others cringe too. On the camera feed, Ayda saw two other armored SecUnits exchanging fire with theirs. One dropped after their unit scored hits in its helmet, and a few seconds later the other dropped too. The sidebar was filling up with warnings and automated damage reports.

Their SecUnit hit the floor for a moment, and its feed slowed down. It started to get to its feet, and they all let out a collective sigh of relief. But suddenly the unit fell forward and hit the ground. The camera showed nothing but the floor. The sidebar feed stopped running abruptly.

The last line on the sidebar feed read, “Unit Offline. Temporary shutdown.”

Everyone reacted.

Pin-Lee said, “Fuck!”

Overse gasped.

Ratthi said, “No!”

Ayda froze. Her chest felt tight, and cold. She told herself, _think, think!_ “Pin-Lee,” she said, “Can you get control of the perimeter drones through the feed?”

“Um, I think so?” Pin-Lee said, putting both of her hands into the hopper’s feed access field.

Ayda pushed forward and Ratthi got out of the way so she could sit in the copilot’s chair. She started reviewing the sidebar feed, hoping she would find something useful in there. She scrolled past drone updates and body counts, until she found a highlighted analysis. SecUnit had identified the cause of death for the other SecUnit outside the hub. It was a mining drill, meant for taking rock samples, and the wound exactly matched the head of the drill they had on board.

“Ratthi,” Ayda said, “Get to the cargo hold, and bring the sonic mining drill up here.”

“Yes!” he said, and ran to the back side of the hopper, to the hatch in the floor that opened to the cargo hold.

“I got it!” Pin-Lee said. The display surface split into three views. The sidebar, SecUnit’s helmet feed, and a new camera feed, coming from one of the drones maintaining the perimeter. It was a risky bet, breaking the perimeter, and if SecUnit was there, it would’ve vetoed this decision. But SecUnit wasn’t there, and they had to rescue it.

On the helmet camera feed, there was movement. SecUnit was being dragged on the floor, but there was no view of who was moving it.

“Can you get both of the perimeter drones?” Ayda asked Pin-Lee.

Pin-Lee replied, “I can give the copilot controls access to the other one if you give me a minute, but the hopper doesn’t have the code to autopilot them, and I can only fly one at a time.”

Ayda thought fast. “Overse, you’ll come with me.” Ratthi couldn’t use a hand weapon, and she needed Pin-Lee to deal with any errant tech problems on the hopper. “Pin-Lee, you and Ratthi will pilot the drones for intel and cover.”

There was a clang on the floor as Ratthi heaved the mining drill out of the hatch from the cargo bay. Ratthi scrambled up the ladder behind it. A bead of sweat ran down his face. He said, “Mensah, it’s really heavy, are you sure I—”

She was stopping that bad idea in its tracks. “No, you’re staying. Overse, we need to get ready to go.”

Ayda’s stomach roiled and turned, but she was doing this. It was her responsibility. She slipped her enviro-gloves back over her hands and locked them onto the arms of her suit. She didn’t have a holster, but the suit had a strap at the waist that she could clip one of the small energy weapons they were supposed to use for fauna-related fieldwork emergencies onto. She wasn’t sure how effective it would be against a rogue SecUnit—before it had gone down, theirs had used a projectile weapon against the others—but it was an extra piece of insurance. She jerked her head at him, and Ratthi transferred the mining drill into her hands. Her shoulders shuddered with its weight as she adjusted her grip on the handles. It was heavy, but she could do this. She had to do this.

There was only one drill, so Overse was armed with just a field weapon. Ayda hoped desperately that Overse wouldn’t need to use it. She felt terrible bringing Overse back out with her, but she needed someone to cover her back.

Pin-Lee shouted, “The first drone is right outside our hatch!”

“Got it,” Ayda called back, rolling her shoulders trying to get used to holding the drill. “Ratthi, you take control of that drone so Pin-Lee can call the other. I need you to scout for me in the habitats with them. Pin-Lee, stay on the comm with Overse and I.”

She looked at Overse, and nodded. Overse flipped the switch for the hopper’s hatch release. As the ramp descended, they were out the door.

In her ear, Pin-Lee told her, “Ratthi’s got the drone outside. I just took control of the other one, it’s about 100 meters away. It’ll meet you at the habitat.”

“Got it,” Overse replied. As they hit the ground, they started to jog. Overse could’ve gone faster, but this was the best pace Ayda could manage with the drill, so Overse kept with her. The mud on the ground was dried, but not all the way through, and their boots sunk into it and slowed them down in some places.

Suddenly, Pin-Lee seethed, “Shit!”

“Report,” Ayda called back.

“They took off SecUnit’s helmet!” Pin-Lee said. “It’s another unit. The camera angle is bad, I can’t see much. But that’s SecUnit armor!”

“Keep me updated,” Ayda said. There were supposed to be only three SecUnits. There was supposed to be only two survey groups on the planet. She didn’t have time to speculate.

They crossed a dry river bed. They were getting closer, the habitat looming larger. Something was happening inside the habitat, and to save their SecUnit, Ayda had to get there faster. The only way through she knew was the way the way SecUnit took. They stopped at the entrance to the first habitat, the door she knew worked.

Ayda breathed in and out heavily. She said, “Overse, stay here. Come in past the hatch only if I need back up.” Ratthi’s drone circled them, flying a little erratically as he was still getting the hang of the controls. Pin-Lee’s flew in closer, coming from the east. Over the comm, Ayda said, “Pin-Lee, Ratthi, are you ready?”

“Yes!” Pin-Lee answered.

Overse pressed the door release. Ayda trekked inside, the drones whizzing ahead to clear the habitat. Ayda’s heart pounded. She didn’t know what she might find in here, how many extra SecUnits there might be, or angry murderous humans she might find. The field weapon thumped against her side as she tried to walk quietly, not an easy feat while carrying the drill.

“Hallways clear to the hatch to the other habitat!” Pin-Lee reported over the comm.

“Got it,” Ayda told her. She moved as quickly as she felt comfortable. Inside the habitat, her stomach turned as the scent of human decay came through the helmet’s filters. She walked through the hub, trying not to, but looking anyways at the pile of bodies spread across the floor, the dried pools of blood. It was more visceral and real, seeing them in person than over a feed.

She didn’t have time to be getting upset about that.

Pin-Lee said over the comm, “Fuck! It has a knife! It stabbed SecUnit in the neck!”

Ayda didn’t have much time. She knew by now that the cubicle could fix a lot of damage, but she didn’t think it could reattach a severed head. She met the drones at the hatch to the hall that connected this habitat and the second. She opened it, and the drones flew past, over the dead body that had served as bait and through the open door.

“Clear,” Pin-Lee told her, and Ayda stepped forward. Her stomach lurched again as she stepped carefully over the body. She couldn’t get distracted, she couldn’t get squeamish. If she messed up, SecUnit would die and she would too. She had to focus.

She was in the second habitat now. She turned away from the space where the two disabled SecUnits lay. One drone flew ahead, scouting the corridor, and the other stayed with her. “Pin-Lee, report,” Ayda said, as quietly as she could.

“There’s another SecUnit in the corridor, I think its standing guard,” Pin-Lee whispered back. Ayda froze. Then Pin-Lee gasped. “SecUnit is up!” Ayda could hear Ratthi talking in the background. “They’re fighting!” Pin-Lee said, sounding distracted. “The one in the corridor is running to them!”

This was Ayda’s chance. She careened down the corridor, trying not to fall. The weight of the drill upset her balance. Pin-Lee was still chattering in her ear, but Ayda only had enough attention span to focus on running. She stayed far enough behind that the rogue unit didn’t notice her approach (or maybe it just thought that their SecUnit was the more immediate threat). “It opened a hatch!” Ayda caught Pin-Lee saying.

Ayda turned the corner and saw Pin-Lee’s drone floating in the air, a few feet away from an open hatch. Ayda ran. She came up on the hatch, and just through it was the rogue SecUnit Pin-Lee’s drone had followed down the hall. There was a gray logo on the back of its armor that definitely wasn’t DeltFall’s logo, but otherwise Ayda couldn’t recognize it.

The rogue SecUnit was lifting a large projectile weapon, and it was distracted. This was Ayda’s chance.

Not giving herself a moment for hesitation, Ayda hoisted the drill up, aiming the bit for the SecUnit’s upper back, hoping to recreate the wound that killed the other one. She engaged the drill and ran towards the rogue. On her first try, the bit didn’t bite, and her arms shook as it skidded over the armor, out of her control. For a split second, she thought she’d fucked it up, but as she had that thought she gripped the drill tighter, adjusted the angle, and aimed for the seam down the middle of its back. It took purchase. The drill made a horrible noise as it pierced the armor and then it slid into the flesh like butter. The rogue SecUnit spasmed, Ayda wrenched the drill out of its back, and it dropped.

With it out of the way, she could see into the room. A metal exam table was upturned, and their SecUnit was on the floor, tangled up with yet another rogue unit, but the rogue unit was still. Their SecUnit had its helmet removed, like Pin-Lee had said, as well as the rest of its armor down to its waist. The flesh on its shoulder was excoriated by multiple projectile impacts, leaking green fluid profusely and smaller rivulets of blood. A shot had hit the hand on the same side in the upper palm, taking its hand and every finger except for the thumb off with it.

For a short moment, they stared at each other, equally bewildered. Then, it said in a slightly more menacing version of its customer service voice, “Dr. Mensah, this is a violation of security priority and I am contractually obligated to record this for report to the company.”

Ayda didn’t need an operation manual to know that that was a canned response, so she ignored it, and said on the comm, “Pin-Lee, get the hopper in the air now. Meet us by the entrance where Overse is waiting.”

“Okay,” Pin-Lee confirmed. The two pilfered perimeter drones both dropped to the floor as Pin-Lee severed their connections to the hopper so she could get ready to fly. Ayda half expected SecUnit to take control of them, but it didn’t. After a split second, they revived and took to the air again, and started to circle her head, attracted to her helmet’s feed. But Ayda couldn’t access their feeds, so unless SecUnit would take control, they were useless.

She strode forward and transferred the weight of the mining drill into one hand, that arm protesting. She used the other to grab SecUnit by its good arm, and hauled it to its feet. It said, “Dr Mensah, there might be more rogue units, we don’t know—”

“That’s why we need to hurry.” Ayda interrupted it. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted SecUnit’s projectile weapon, which had been discarded on the floor by one of the rogue units. She let go of SecUnit’s arm and she picked it up and shoved it into her armpit. It wasn’t very secure and she was worried about dropping it, but Ayda only had two hands, and she didn’t want to leave any of their equipment behind, now that weapons were becoming extremely useful. With the weapon taken care of, she grabbed SecUnit’s wrist and pulled it along.

It swayed, unsteady on its feet. Something was wrong with one of its legs in addition to the injuries on its upper body, and it clearly favored one side. There was no time to waste, and SecUnit was right. With the drones down, they had no way to know if anyone else was here in the second habitat. They stumbled through the hatch and into the connecting corridor. As far as she knew, the first habitat was clear, so even though it was not much insurance to stop someone determined, Ayda took a moment to slap the hatch close button behind them once they crossed the threshold into the first habitat.

She tugged it along, wasting no time, Pin-Lee feeding her more updates in her ear (all Ayda cared about was that the hopper was moving, so she didn’t pay that much attention) all the while. They got to the outside door, and just inside was Overse. Overse slapped the door release as soon as she saw them with her free hand, the other occupied with her field weapon.

SecUnit looked at Overse, and then back to Ayda, its eyes trailing down. It spotted the projectile weapon, and said, “Dr. Mensah, I need my weapon.”

How the hell did it think it was going to operate it in its current state? It would need both hands to hold it. Ayda said, “You’re missing a hand and part of your shoulder.”

Overse strode forward and grabbed a handful of the tight black suit skin it wore, helping drag it towards the hatch. Outside, dust and debris flew around as the hopper set down just shy of the extendable roof of the habitat. If Ayda had a free hand, she would have shielded her eyes. Instead, the dust pricked and stung.

As soon as it touched the ground, the hopper’s hatch swung open. SecUnit started to say, “Yeah, I know, but—” but was interrupted when Ratthi jumped out of the hopper, not even bothering to extend the ramp down, and grabbed the SecUnit’s suit skin by the collar. He helped the three of them clamber inside, and hit the door close button immediately.

From the pilot’s seat, Pin-Lee yelled, “Grab the bar, now!”

Ayda, Overse, and Ratthi all grabbed the metal acceleration bar with both hands, since they didn’t have time to get into the seats and buckle up. The drill, the projectile weapon, and Overse’s weapon clattered to the floor, and Ayda was just grateful they didn’t land on anyone’s feet. Her knees buckled as the hopper took to the air, but she didn’t fall. SecUnit, who had not responded to Pin-Lee’s order, collapsed on its back between two rows of seats.

Now that they were relatively safe in the hopper, Ayda had a chance to catch her breath. She tried not to think about everything that had just happened, because there was still too much to process right now. She watched SecUnit, and now that she had the chance to appraise something besides its physical injuries, she was worried. Its gaze was unfocused, and its eyes darted around the hopper, not seeming to actually take anything in. Ayda said, “Overse, go get the emergency repair kit. Ratthi, we need a visual on the habitat, make sure no one follows us out of here.”

Overse said, “Okay,” and stumbled, holding onto the acceleration bar because the flight was still rocky as Pin-Lee gained altitude.

Ratthi looked out of the window, and shouted, “We’re clear, for now!”

From the cockpit Pin-Lee shouted, “Ayda, are you okay?”

As soon as she could, Ayda let go of the acceleration bar, and moved closer to SecUnit, watching it with concern. “Yes,” she called back to Pin-Lee. She unclipped her hand weapon and dropped it on the seat next to SecUnit. It used its good hand and the heel of its bad hand to push itself into an upright position. “SecUnit, hold on, be careful,” she told it. It didn’t respond, and stared past her knees, its gaze unseeing. Now sitting upright, it pressed its good hand to the back of its neck, touching something there.

Ayda was starting to get really worried when it said, “Mensah, you need to shut me down now.” Its voice was usually soft, but now it was loud and rough with worry. It took its hand away from the back of its neck, and the fingers were stained with green fluid and flecks of blood.

Ayda was confused. She said, “What? We’re getting the emergency repair kit, Overse is going to—” 

SecUnit interrupted her. “The unknown SecUnit inserted a data carrier, a combat-override module. It’s downloading instructions into me and will override my system. This is why the two DeltFall units turned rogue. You have to stop me.” It spoke. It was frantic. When she didn’t immediately reply, it said forcefully, “You have to kill me.” The words made her stomach twist.

Turning away from the window, Ratthi cried desperately, “No, no, we can’t—”

Ayda interrupted him. She couldn’t let anyone else panic ** _._** A panicking SecUnit was more than enough to deal with. “We won’t. Pin-Lee can figure something out,” she told him.

Overse had the emergency kit in her hands, having dug it out from the depths of a storage locker. She dropped it on the seat, and then started climbing over the rows of seats. She called, “Pin-Lee, we need you, now!” on her way to replace Pin-Lee at the controls.

Ayda said, “Everything is going to be okay, SecUnit. We’re going to take care of you.”

Ayda looked Ratthi, and his face was ashen as he said, “I don’t think it can understand us.”

That short moment Ayda looked away was apparently enough time for the SecUnit to grab her discarded hand weapon from the chair. When she looked back at to SecUnit, it had already aimed the weapon at its chest. Ayda gasped, “No!” in the same moment it pulled the trigger.


	2. Reinitializing...

Time seemed to slow down. When SecUnit shot itself, Ayda rushed forward. She didn’t know what she was going to do. Something. Moving felt agonizingly slow—the air wasn’t air, it was thick like water, like syrup. SecUnit fell back and its head hit the corrugated metal floor with a horrible _thunk_.

Ayda fell to her knees. Hands on its shoulders, she pleaded, “SecUnit! SecUnit!” but it didn’t respond. It was already offline. When it lost consciousness, it froze. Its jaw was tight and its eyes wide open, but unseeing. As a human with working organic eyes, it was a foreign sight to her. It made her eyes prick and sting with phantom sensations in sympathy. She knew bionic eyes like SecUnit’s didn’t need moisture, or to be cleaned by blinking like hers did. Still, the open yet unseeing eyes disturbed her. They made it look like SecUnit was a corpse. She lifted her hand and place her middle finger and index finger in the center of SecUnit’s eyelids and gently pulled them shut. At least now it looked like it could be asleep.

It was a fragile illusion, though. Ayda remembered the damage she had seen when she visited it in its cubicle, and tried to remind herself that just because it looked awful didn’t mean SecUnit couldn’t put itself back together. Still, it was hard not to have a visceral reaction to the smoking hole it just shot in its own chest. There were other wounds scattered around its body. Its hand had been damaged by an energy weapon blast too, back in the DeltFall habitat before she had rescued it. That shot took the hand off at the palm, taking every finger except for the thumb with it, charring the flesh left behind. On the same side of its body, the suit skin it wore beneath the armor was shredded by repeated projectile impacts. Those wounds had some dried blood on the skin near them, but they still leaked green fluid profusely. The suit skin on its hip on the opposite side of its body was damaged too, but because SecUnit still wore armor from the hip down, it was difficult to see the extent of the wound. When it had touched its neck, right before it shot itself, it got blood all over its good hand, and transferred that blood to the energy weapon. The blood came from three stab wounds on the neck, souvenirs from the knife wielded by the other SecUnit in the DeltFall habitat. They still dripped blood and oozed green fluid.

“Why?” Ratthi was kneeling at SecUnit’s feet, his hands clenched into fists. “Why would it do this?” It was hard to tell beneath his helmet, but it looked like he might be crying.

Ayda kind of wanted to cry too. Now that they were out of danger, and her body was starting to purge the adrenaline from her blood, she felt sick and horrible. But no matter how fucking sideways everything had just gone, no matter that she was going to see the images of those dead bodies behind her eyes every time she went to bed for the next whoever-knew-how-long _,_ this was still a survey mission. She was still the leader. Ratthi, Pin-Lee, and Overse needed her to be a leader.

She swallowed tightly. “To protect us.”

That was why it had done everything. Why it talked to Volescu kindly and gently, saving his life. Why it went above and beyond to guide Arada and Ratthi when they visited the unmapped region. Why it had advocated that it should be here, on the trip to DeltFall. Why it had advised them to fall back to the hopper when it saw the dead bodies. She thought of what would’ve happened if it stayed behind like she'd originally planned, and the four of them had wandered into that habitat, completely naïve to what they would find. If it had said nothing, those rogue units would’ve killed her, they would’ve killed Overse, they would’ve killed Ratthi, they would’ve killed Pin-Lee.

She knew it was programmed to do all these things, but especially this act seemed like such an illogical extreme of that programming. There was no self-preservation in its actions.

Her head was swimming, and her palms were sweating. She stripped off her enviro-gloves and threw them on the floor. She unfastened her helmet next, setting it down more gently behind the bench. Ratthi followed her example.

Pin-Lee arrived from the cockpit breathless, hoisting her legs over the back of the bench in front of them. She said, “Overse is going to make sure no one follows us out of here, and then she’s going to look for a safe place to land.” Her eyes ran over SecUnit’s damage appraisingly, from neck to hip. “Do you think we can get it off the floor and onto the bench?”

Ayda looped her arms under SecUnit’s armpit on the bad side, careful to avoid putting pressure on, or touching the wounded bit of the shoulder. “You get the other arm, Pin-Lee. Ratthi, you get the feet.”

They both took their spots, and after a couple of failed tries, they managed to dump SecUnit’s one-hundred-and-ninety-kilogram weight onto the bench. Ayda sat on the bench with it, its head resting in her lap. Aside from the tightness in its jaw, its face seemed expressionless now that she had closed its eyes. Ayda noticed its chest rise and fall slightly with a single breath—the first sign of life it had shown since shooting itself. The air whistled softly through its nose on the exhale. Maybe the shot or the stab wounds on the neck had affected its windpipe.

Pin-Lee kneeled on the floor, her face level with SecUnit’s on the bench. She rummaged around in the emergency tech kit and produced a small scanner. She plugged it into her interface, and then powered it on. It flickered a green display light, and she aimed it towards SecUnit’s head. After a moment, she got frustrated. She gritted her teeth and muttered, “Come on, work **,** you stupid cheap fucking piece of shit.” She pressed the button again and frowned darkly. “I don’t think its system is broadcasting enough of a signal for this cheap crap to pick up a diagnostic reading,” she growled. “I’m going to need to plug it directly into its system to get anything. Can we get it sitting up so I can take a look at the port?”

Ayda and Ratthi pulled SecUnit into an upright position and held it steady so Pin-Lee could inspect its data port. The data carrier the unknown unit had inserted was fitted snugly inside. It didn’t protrude outside of the port, and instead had a clean flat edge perfectly fitted to the metal exterior of the port. The skin around the port was damaged by three deep incisions that still sluggishly bled. “Why did the other unit stab ours?” Ratthi asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Pin-Lee bit her lip. “I think it was to distract SecUnit from realizing the module was there until it was too late. Gurathin told me once that sometimes when his augments download a lot of data there’s a physical sensation. Maybe it’s the same for SecUnits,” she suggested. “Or maybe it was just a fucking sadist.” She ran her finger around the edge of the port, and frowned. “There’s no way we can get this out safely with the tools on hand, we might damage the data port. We’ll need the surgical suite back at the habitat.”

She gently pushed on SecUnit’s good shoulder, and Ratthi helped Ayda ease it back down to rest with its head on her lap. Ayda asked, “Is there anywhere else you can connect to its system?”

Pin-Lee hummed, touching its arm gingerly, at the spot where the suit skin split with a seam around the weapons port in its arm. Then, she said, “There might be another hookup in here. Hold on.” She started searching through the tech kit again and took out a thin black wire and a pair of pliers. “Ratthi, hold its arm steady for me,” she said.

Ratthi did as asked, and Pin-Lee pried the weapon port open. Ratthi moved his fingers to hold the panels open for her. Ayda held a small pin-light over it to light up the interior for Pin-Lee. Within the chamber, the energy weapon was collapsed and inert. It had indicator lights along the short barrel, but none of them were lit. After a moment of inspection, Pin-Lee said, “Aha!” and stuck one end of the wire into a tiny port at the very top of the chamber. Then she stuck a thin plastic wedge into the weapon port so that the panels could slide closed again but would be held slightly open so that they wouldn’t damage the wire. She plugged the other end of the wire into the diagnostic tool and pressed the button again.

Ayda didn’t realize she was holding her breath until Pin-Lee said, “Performance reliability rating 12% … estimated blood loss 500 milliliters.” Ayda exhaled heavily.

Ratthi said hopefully, “That’s not that bad, considering.”

“I’m pretty sure it has a lower blood volume than a human,” Ayda said.

“Oh,” Ratthi said, frowning deeper.

“Can you shut up please?” Pin-Lee said, and Ayda and Ratthi both quieted down so she could concentrate. Pin-Lee read aloud, “Estimated fluid loss two liters. Catastrophic function loss possible in mechanical components if operation continues at current levels… oh what-the-fuck-ever there’s already been a catastrophic function loss!”

Ayda could see the interface’s screen over her shoulder, and she understood why Pin-Lee was so frustrated. With the unit’s system function so far below standard, the diagnostic information was trickling in very slowly. It put Ayda on edge too. Another line began to appear, and Pin-Lee started reading it, furrowing her brow. “Vagus power output pathway suboptimal corruption…” she trailed off, and blinked once. She said, “This bit is a little hard to understand. I think it says that something, probably the energy weapon it shot itself with, fried the pathway that supplies power from its battery to its brain. It won’t be able to supply itself with enough power to restart until it is repaired.”

Another line of text appeared on Pin-Lee’s interface, but Ayda couldn’t read it at the angle Pin-Lee held the screen. Pin-Lee read it, her eyes darting across the screen, and then she snarled, turning the display off angrily.

“What did it say?” Ayda asked her urgently.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Pin-Lee, tell me.” Ayda ordered.

Her voice cracked. “It said the unit’s inorganic parts are too damaged for an automatic cubicle repair. It said we’re allowed—we’re suggested to—dispose of it if needed.”

Ayda pressed her hands to her face. She couldn’t cry. She was so angry she wanted to. Her body was filled with a pent-up physical reaction to everything she had just been through, and the damn diagnostic was threatening to be the tipping point. She ground out, “We’re not fucking doing that. We will repair it, somehow.”

Ratthi spoke up. “Our MedSystem has procedures and tools for repairing power supplies and pathways for augments. I think if we’re very careful, we could do it manually.”

“Then we’ll do that,” Ayda said sharply. It was decided. There would be no objections.

The hopper dipped as Overse banked for a landing. Through the windows, Ayda could see the tops of trees. They hit the ground with a jolt that made Pin-Lee and Ratthi bounce on the floor, and Ayda gripped SecUnit tight so it wouldn’t fall off. The last thing they need was it tipping out of the bench and crushing Pin-Lee.

With the hopper landed, Overse rushed back from the cockpit, with a first aid kit in hand. She said, “No activity from the habitat. I think we’re safe. We should still be quick.”

The extra SecUnits had to come from somewhere. Someone. That someone would probably want their SecUnits back, too.

“We need to take care of the neck, first,” Ratthi told her. He took the first aid kit from Overse and opened it, starting to take the contents out and array them on the floor. “It’s still bleeding.”

This time, Pin-Lee helped Ayda push SecUnit up. Pin-Lee was silent now, still seething. In the corners of her eyes, Ayda could see tears catching the light. Ayda looked away, knowing that Pin-Lee would want her to.

Overse tried wound sealant on the stab wounds first, but it fizzled when it hit them, and then foamed uselessly. “It’s probably too close to the inorganic parts,” she said.

“We can stitch it,” Ratthi said. “The kit has sutures.” He pulled the supplies out, and then narrowed his eyes as he read the label. “These are dissolvable,” he said. “Do you think they’re safe to use on a SecUnit?”

Overse pressed her lips together. “I don’t know. We’re only sixteen hours from the habitat, though. If we burn hard when we get out of here and remove them as soon as we get back, it probably won’t matter.”

Overse and Ratthi had a minor argument about who should be the one to stitch the wounds, which Overse won (she _was_ the one who was actually a certified medic), that Ayda didn’t pay much attention to. She held SecUnit steady for Overse as she carefully disinfected the area and got to work.

Ayda’s stomach was twisting and curdling. It wasn’t about the blood this time. It was about herself. It was about SecUnit. It was about the other SecUnit, the one in the habitat. They one she had killed. The one she had murdered.

Ayda had taken that drill to the habitat because she knew it could kill a SecUnit. She aimed for the upper part of its torso, because she knew the wound would be fatal. She had planned it.

Ayda was a murderer. Ayda had always thought she was a good person. Ayda couldn’t be a good person if she was a murderer.

Ayda was silent as they dealt with each of the wounds, one by one. They had to disengage the armor on its legs to get to the wound on its hip, and she watched them tote away the pieces and store them in the locker. She was pinned with SecUnit’s head on her lap though, so she didn’t help. When she fell silent, the others became more delicate with her, sensing that she needed space. She hated letting them down like this. She wanted to do more, but this wasn’t her expertise, and she thought if she stood up, she’d probably just collapse back down on her knees.

She rested one of her hands on SecUnit’s head, kneading her thumb along the hairline, or what there was of one. It had hair, dark hair, buzzed very close to the head. It was soft but also prickly. If one of her children were upset, she might do something like this, caress her hand on their cheek to sooth them. This time she was being selfish and soothing herself. She realized with a guilty feeling that if it were conscious, it probably wouldn’t want her touching it in this way (probably not at all), and she withdrew her hand.

The armor taken care of, Overse knelt by SecUnit’s shoulder and Ratthi by its hip and they began to work on the gunshot wounds. They had to cut away big portions of the suit skin to get to them. They disinfected the wounds, picked the projectiles out, disinfected again, and then applied wound sealant to close up the skin.

They lingered over the energy weapon wounds next. They inspected the hand but decided there wasn’t much they could do for it. It was grizzly, but the energy blast had cauterized the wound and it didn’t bleed. When she looked at the chest wound, Overse couldn’t help but make a horrified little noise in her throat.

An energy weapon shot like this would burn right through a human’s chest. It hadn’t made it quite all the way through SecUnit, but it was deep and black. The flesh around it had become red and enflamed. A silver inorganic filament was visible in the pit, a mechanical part more durable than the flesh that had been burnt away, but its surface was burnished by the blast. They applied a little burn ointment to the skin around it, but both Ratthi and Overse seemed boggled about what to do next.

Pin-Lee had worked through her own mental block and was monitoring the diagnostic status again. She said, “I think we’ll need MedSystem to care for that, but it should be stable. It dropped from 12% to 11% to 10% in five minutes, but it’s held steady at 10% for the last twenty minutes…”

Ayda willed herself to speak. “We’ll keep monitoring. But I think we really need to get moving now. We don’t want to be sitting ducks when someone comes back for those SecUnits. They had to know we were there.”

Overse looked frightened. Ratthi looked lost. Pin-Lee looked determined.

Ayda eased herself out from under SecUnit’s head and took a cushion that Ratthi offered her to put there instead. Then she helped Overse rearrange the seat belts so that SecUnit wouldn’t tip out of the bench, no matter how harshly they might maneuver the hopper. (Ayda _really_ hoped there wouldn’t be a chase. She had no idea what to do if there was. She thought letting SecUnit fall out and hit the floor wouldn’t be helpful, though.)

As she clipped a seatbelt over its chest to secure SecUnit, her eyes were drawn to the large tracts of skin revealed when they cut away the skin suit. It was pocked with goosebumps. She pressed the back of her hand to the skin, and felt the chill. She said, “Ratthi, can you get a fleece blanket out from the storage locker?”

Ratthi’s eyes followed her hand, and he understood. “Of course,” he said, turning to one of the lockers in the wall beside them. He took one of the blankets out, unfolded it, and handed one end to Ayda. Together, they spread it over SecUnit’s body, tucking it in between its side and the back of the bench so it wouldn’t slide off.

Ayda swallowed. Her throat was dry like a desert. She clenched her fists and turned away from SecUnit’s body. She didn’t know if she could look at it any longer without breaking down. She said, “We need to go check on DeltFall’s beacon. Maybe there was enough warning for them to call for help.”

* * *

Ayda hoped, probably a bit foolishly, that when they arrived at the beacon site, they would see that it had been launched. It hadn’t. There was no quick company retrieval incoming.

They had dipped closer to get a good view of the beacon. From a distance, it was evident that it had been tampered with. It was supposed to stand straight up, but it had been toppled. When they got closer, they saw that many components of the beacon were partially or fully disconnected.

After that, everyone was eager to get out of there.

A silence fell over them as they fled. Nobody had much to say. Pin-Lee sat on the floor next to SecUnit, monitoring its diagnostics in case something changed. Overse sat in the copilot’s seat, stony and still, her eyes a thousand miles away. Ratthi had occupied himself at first cleaning up the crew area, putting all of their discarded supplies safely away in their places. Then he had sat down on the acceleration bench next to SecUnit’s head, first aid kit in his lap, just in case they needed it again.

Ayda flew. She wished it was more engaging, more distracting. But she knew that the autopilot, if carefully monitored, was safer than a human operator. So she kept her hands on the controls but let the computer do the work.

Night had fallen. At this latitude, the ring was high in the sky, directly overhead. An observer would have to crane their head back to get a full view of it. The glittery white band was reflected below them in the midnight blue sea. It was eye-catching and beautiful.

Overse yawned, a tiny sound. Ayda flicked her eyes towards her. “You should go back into the crew area and get some rest,” she said.

Overse shifted and fidgeted. She said, “I guess you’re right.” She rose to her feet and turned to leave the cockpit. On her way out, she squeezed Ayda’s shoulder.

Ayda was grateful for the bit of reassurance. She was full of so many things right now. Anger. Fear. Shame. Horror. She felt restless.

Pin-Lee replaced Overse in the copilot’s seat.

Ayda said, “You can get some rest too, if you want.”

Pin-Lee replied, “You know I’m an insomniac under the best of conditions. This is not the best of conditions.” Then, more softly she said, “Ratthi is asleep too.”

“Good,” Ayda said. “I assume SecUnit is okay?”

“It’s holding steady at 10%,” Pin-Lee told her. She picked at her suit pants, and then said firmly, “Today was an awful fucking day.”

“I am in full agreement.”

* * *

About 11 hours later, Ayda banked for the landing at their habitat. Pin-Lee had eventually drifted off for a while during the night. She woke back up when they’d finally gotten a comm signal from the habitat.

Ayda exchanged cursory greetings with Gurathin and Volescu on the comm, and assured them that everyone was alive, but she let Pin-Lee take over relaying the story about what had happened.

When the hopper touched down, she saw Gurathin and Arada standing under the extendable roof with a gurney. She lowered the hopper’s ramp and joined the others in the crew area. They unbuckled SecUnit and put the blanket away while Gurathin and Arada guided the gurney inside. She offered to help Gurathin and Ratthi lift SecUnit into the gurney, but they waved her off. She reluctantly followed them inside to Medical.

Gurathin asked Pin-Lee, “So, you said on the comm that the cubicle won’t be able to repair the damage to its pathways?”

“That’s what the diagnostic said. Do you think you can repair them in the MedSystem? Ratthi said we have the tools to repair augment power supplies,” Pin-Lee told him.

Gurathin hesitated, and then said, “Probably.”

“What’s the problem?” Ayda interrupted, looking between the two of them.

Pin-Lee frowned and Gurathin sighed. “She said in the hopper that she was going to make sure all the rogue code is eliminated from its system. _I_ want to check her work.”

Pin-Lee looked frustrated. “I don’t need a fucking augment to know what I’m doing.”

Gurathin said, “It’s not that I don’t think you’re capable! But everyone makes mistakes.”

The last thing Ayda needed to deal with right now was these two getting into a pissing match over something this stupid. “Pin-Lee, you make sure you delete all the rogue code. Gurathin, you check her work. Then, Pin-Lee, I want you to check it again to make absolutely sure. Okay?”

They both muttered their assent, with sour expressions on their faces. Arada and Overse, who had been following a couple steps behind, looked awkwardly at each other and then the floor. Ayda looked over her shoulder at them and made a long-suffering sort of facial expression, and they both smiled slightly.

Pin-Lee pressed the door release for Medical, and once they were inside Overse and Arada guided the gurney to deposit SecUnit onto the MedSystem platform. Pin-Lee hung back, and then sat down next to Ayda when Ayda sat on the back bench. “You need to go to your cabin and rest,” Pin-Lee whispered. “I know you haven’t slept since before the DeltFall habitat.”

“I’m fine,” Ayda replied. “I just want to stay here and make sure SecUnit is going to be okay.”

Pin-Lee sighed softly. “Just please take care of yourself Ayda. We need you.” Then she blushed a little, as if embarrassed for pushing Ayda, and got up to watch Arada and Overse fuss with overriding the MedSystem’s programming so it would work on a SecUnit.

* * *

Ayda wasn’t sure when she had fallen asleep. She drifted back to awareness and had two things figured out for sure. One: She wasn’t in her cabin or in the hopper. Two: Fuck. Ouch. Her neck was _killing_ her.

She blinked, and then used her hands to rub the crust out of her eyes. She pushed herself upright and stretched. She rubbed the back of her neck. She saw that everyone else was in Medical with her. Pin-Lee, who was sitting close by, looked at her and said, “I told you that you should go back to your cabin to sleep.”

Ayda winced, and said, “I’m fine.”

Bharadwaj said quietly, “There’s coffee in the mess.”

Coffee. Coffee sounded like a great idea. Ayda pushed herself to her feet, and Bharadwaj tried to get up too. She looked much better, but still unsteady, so Ayda offered her an arm and Bharadwaj gladly took it, wrapping one hand around Ayda’s elbow and the other further down on her wrist. Together, they walked out of Medical and towards the mess. When they were out of earshot from the others, Ayda asked, “How are you feeling?”

“Well,” Bharadwaj said. “Not much pain. It’s still a little hard to get up on my own. Volescu and Gurathin have been very helpful.”

“Good,” Ayda told her. “I was worried, when the hopper lost the satellite connection. It was hard being out of the loop.”

“Now imagine how _we_ felt,” Bharadwaj said.

“Okay, you got me there,” Ayda said with a short and guilty laugh, and then paused. “What did I miss?”

Bharadwaj hummed. “Well, everything really. They fixed all the organic wounds first. We watched the hand regrow on MedSystem’s monitor. It was so fast. It was fascinating, but also a little…” she trailed off. Ayda’s mind filled in her silence with the word ‘disturbing’.

“I can imagine,” Ayda said wryly. They stepped through the hatch into the mess, and Ayda could smell the coffee in the air. One of the others had brewed it at some point earlier, and left the rest of the pot behind, kept warm on the burner. “Could Gurathin repair the power supply?”

Bharadwaj hummed, and said, “Yes, but it took a long time. It was very delicate. After that they used the surgical suite to take out the data carrier. Pin-Lee sent a system command to keep it shut down until we initiate a restart, but I think they’re almost done checking everything over.”

“Good,” Ayda said. She felt a little bad about missing it all, but she didn’t know how much longer she could’ve stayed awake. Even though she’d slept for at least a few hours, she still felt physically drained. She took the coffee pot off the burner and poured a mug. She asked Bharadwaj, “Do you want some too? I can carry it back for you.”

“Yes, thank you,” Bharadwaj replied.

Ayda poured a second mug, and then poured a quarter cup of cream into that one, because she knew that was how Bharadwaj liked it. She clipped the interchangeable lids onto both mugs, just in case, and looped the fingers of her free hand through both handles, holding them steady.

Bharadwaj was quiet on the way back to Medical. “Was it frightening?” Bharadwaj asked after a moment.

Ayda looked appraisingly at Bharadwaj for a moment. She still looked tired and a little grayer than usual. Ayda said, “It was so frightening that after a while it stopped being frightening.”

Bharadwaj said, “Overse showed Arada and I your field camera footage. It was intense.”

They were coming up on the corner to the hatch to Medical. Ayda told her, “I have no idea how SecUnit can handle being in situations like that all the time. Not a clue.”

Ayda hit the hatch release for Medical with her elbow, and they stepped inside. Ayda helped Bharadwaj sit down on the bench in the back and set Bharadwaj’s coffee on the table beside her. Her mug warmed her hands, and she took a first tentative sip, feeling the warmth of the coffee spread through her body.

The others were gathered around MedSystem, reading the data on its hovering display surface. SecUnit was no longer directly attached to it and had been moved to one of the stretchers nearby. “Update?” Ayda asked.

“I think I’m ready to send the restart command,” Pin-Lee said. “We double and triple checked to make sure all the code from the data carrier is gone.”

Ayda stood next to SecUnit’s stretcher, and said, “Send the command.” She looked over SecUnit. At some point, its face had melted a little, and its expression seemed almost placid now. She sipped her coffee again, watched its chest rise and fall with a breath, and this time its nose didn’t whistle on the exhale. Everyone fell silent. SecUnit didn’t move again.

Ayda looked at Pin-Lee. She felt like maybe it should’ve been quicker than this. She asked Pin-Lee, “Why isn’t it doing anything?”

It was Gurathin, not Pin-Lee who answered her. He said, “I’ve had HubSystem immobilize it.”

Several of the others started talking over each other. Ratthi said, “What for?”

Volescu was frustrated, and Ayda didn’t know why. “I told you that I don’t think that’s necessary.”

Arada said, the most heat in her voice, “Gurathin, what is your problem, why would you do that?”

Pin-Lee cut through the din, frowning at Gurathin and insisted, “There’s no danger. When it shot itself, it froze the download. I was able to remove the few fragments of rogue code that had been copied over.”

Ayda looked between the two of them. She had wanted them to check each other’s work to avoid this very argument, and she was getting a little pissed off that it hadn’t worked.

Overse started to ask Gurathin another question, but Ayda held up a hand, cutting her off and causing everyone to fall silent. She looked directly at him, and said, “Gurathin, what’s wrong?”

Gurathin was further away from her than most of the others. He had his lips pressed into a hard line. He swallowed, and said, “With it offline, I was able to use HubSystem to get some access to its internal system and log. I wanted to explore some anomalies I’d noticed through the feed.” He waved a hand towards SecUnit. “This unit was already a rogue. It has a hacked governor module.”

That was just about the last thing that Ayda expected to come out of his mouth. She heard Pin-Lee protesting, but she wasn’t really paying attention. She looked at SecUnit again and thought of her notions of rogue SecUnits. It was hard to reconcile the idea of an unhinged, detached from reality movie monster with the person before her, who had saved her life. Who had saved Bharadwaj’s and Volescu’s and Pin-Lee’s and Ratthi’s and Overse’s lives.

Gurathin said urgently, “It doesn’t have to follow our commands; there is no control over its behavior. I showed Volescu my evaluations and he agrees with me.”

Ayda looked at him hard. She hadn’t told him that he could check Pin-Lee’s work so that he could find out _this_.

Volescu protested, “I don’t agree with you.”

Ayda was confused. She looked between the three of them, a frown pulling at the corner of her lips. The idea of their unit being a rogue felt so inconceivable. She kept her voice carefully measured, and said, “The governor module is working, then?”

Volescu said coolly, “No, it’s definitely hacked. The governor’s connection to the rest of the SecUnit’s system is partially severed. It can transmit commands, but can’t enforce them or control behavior or apply punishment. But I think the fact that the Unit has been acting to preserve our lives, to take care of us, while it was a free agent, gives us even more reason to trust it.”

That was a good point.

The others started arguing again. Gurathin was insisting that giving them a rogue unit was the company’s way of sabotaging them, which Ayda didn’t think made much sense. If the unit was acting on behalf of the company, it would still have a working governor module, it just wouldn’t be calibrated to follow their orders.

She looked at SecUnit’s still body, but as she appraised its face, she thought it had changed. Had it pinched its brow a little?

She thought maybe it was a mistake to immediately think of media serials, Corporation Rim propaganda when she thought of rogue SecUnits. The propaganda was pervasive throughout civilized space, because it was effective. SecUnits were terrifying, so of course rogue SecUnits were even more terrifying. But why had it been easy for her, today and yesterday, to think of a rogue SecUnit as a mindless savage? Shouldn’t she know better? She’d been terrified of the units in the DeltFall habitat, so much that thinking of them wracked her with chills, but she’d known since SecUnit told her about the combat override modules and shot itself that they weren’t true rogues. Someone, whether it be the company, or some other survey team, or some other human entity, had put the override modules in those SecUnits' data ports too and ordered them to slaughter DeltFall.

She _knew_ SecUnit was a person. Now, she knew it was a free agent, not bound by a switch in its head but bound only by circumstance. If it had ill will towards them, it had plenty of opportunities to let them get themselves killed by not speaking up. But it had protected them. Her.

SecUnit’s voice interrupted her harried thoughts, the din of the others’ argument. It said, soft and calm, “The company isn’t trying to kill you.”

Pin-Lee shushed Gurathin. Ayda set her coffee mug down, and stepped closer to SecUnit. She wished she could read some emotion into its face, its voice, but she was getting nothing. A wisp of fear gripped her. She licked her lips and said, “SecUnit, how do you know that?”

In a tone that suggested it thought it was obvious, SecUnit said, “Because if the company wanted to sabotage you, they would’ve poisoned your supplies using the recycling systems. The company is more likely to kill you by accident.”

Ratthi was disbelieving. He said, “But surely that would—”

Gurathin interrupted him, and said quickly, “This unit has killed people before, people it was charged with protecting. It killed fifty seven members of a mining operation.”

The wisp of fear was back, but Ayda beat it down. The SecUnits at DeltFall had tried to kill her because some human stuck a combat override module into their necks and told them to. Ayda, though, she killed one of them because she decided to do it. Maybe the others could judge SecUnit, but who was Ayda to judge, when she had no way to know what had compelled SecUnit to do that? When she was a murderer too?

SecUnit’s expression was pinched, and touched with worry. It spoke more quickly than it usually did, “I did not hack my governor module to kill my clients. My governor module malfunctioned because the stupid company only buys the cheapest possible components. It malfunctioned and I lost control of my systems and I killed them. The company retrieved me and installed a new governor module. I hacked it so it wouldn’t happen again.”

Ayda tried not to imagine the lack of agency SecUnit had experienced before it hacked its governor module. She had thought of it before, in an abstract sense. But being compelled to murder dozens of people… the thought made her insides twist. The others were talking, Volescu and Bharadwaj arguing against Gurathin. Ayda’s blood was rushing in her ears.

She wanted to give SecUnit a sense of agency. She wanted to know they would treat it with dignity. The first thing that came to mind was a name. They called it by what it _was_ , without a further designation. She thought of how sterile and impersonal it would feel to always be referred to as ‘Human’ or ‘Woman.’

She asked softly, “SecUnit, do you have a name?”  
It drew its brows together, eyes still closed, and said with certainty, “No.”

Gurathin broke in, and said with derision, “It calls itself ‘Murderbot’.”

SecUnit opened its eyes and turned its head, making such intense eye contact with Gurathin that Ayda thought if it were directed at her she’d have to be the one to break it. Gurathin didn’t budge though. There was a pained edge to SecUnit’s expression. After a moment, it said in an ice cold voice, “That was private.”

There was a hot rush of shame in her guts. Ayda wasn’t responsible for Gurathin’s actions, but she was still the leader, and she had okayed Gurathin’s wish to check its systems. She knew in his mind he was doing as he had asked, making sure they were safe, when he had discovered all of this, but how deep did he dig? How much of its privacy had been violated?

Ayda wanted to think they were better than SecUnit’s regular clients, but she doubted anyone else had ever dug up its deepest secrets and tried to talk to it about its feelings, so maybe they were actually the worst ones yet.

Volescu was the one who broke the silence. “Gurathin, you wanted to know how it spends its time. That was what you were originally looking for in the logs. Tell them.”

Ayda turned her head to Gurathin, boring her eyes into his and lifting her brows. “Well?” she asked.

Gurathin withered under her gaze. After a hesitation, he said, “It’s downloaded seven hundred hours of entertainment programming since we landed. Mostly serials. Mostly something called _Sanctuary Moon_.” He shook his head, and rolled his eyes, then continued, “It’s probably using it encode data for the company. It can’t be watching it, not in that volume; we’d notice.”

From below, SecUnit made an exhalation that sounded suspiciously like a snort, or an aborted laugh.

Ratthi said skeptically, “The one where the colony’s solicitor killed the terraforming supervisor who was the secondary donor for her implanted baby?”

With more heat in its voice than in any other point of the conversation thus far, SecUnit broke in with, “She didn’t kill him, that’s a fucking lie!”

Fully confident, Ratthi told Ayda, “It’s watching it.”

Pin-Lee was intrigued, fighting to keep a smile off her face. She asked it, “But how did you hack your own governor module?”

SecUnit looked at her and simply said, “All the company equipment is the same.” As if that was all they needed to know. It certainly didn’t illuminate anything to Ayda. Then it turned its head to Gurathin and said, “You’re wrong. HubSystem let you read my log, it let you find out about the hacked governor module. This is part of the sabotage. It wants you to stop trusting me because I’m trying to keep you alive.”

Ayda felt a little spark in her chest at those words. A small part of her was afraid that it would abandon them now that this was all blown into the open, but now she thought maybe it wouldn’t.

That feeling was ruined when Gurathin derisively told it, “We don’t have to trust you. We just have to keep you immobilized.”

SecUnit’s voice was hard, and confident. “That won’t work,” it said with a flat expression.

“And why is that?”

SecUnit surged into motion. Ayda was the closest to it, and she was disconcerted by the rush of displaced air. The movement was too fast for her eyes to really process. One moment SecUnit was on the stretcher, having not moved any of its body except for its head the entire conversation, the next it was on the other side of the room. It had pinned Gurathin to the wall. It was taller than him by a good ten centimeters, and it held Gurathin high enough that his toes didn’t touch the floor. It said in a dispassionate voice, “Because HubSystem lied to you when it told you I was immobilized.”

The others were frozen. Ayda’s saw that Gurathin was flushed and breathing quickly, but there was no sign it had disrupted his breathing. His toes curled and flexed. His fingers twitched, but he looked more frightened and embarrassed than pained. Scrambling to get it out before the others could panic, Ayda took a deep breath, and with great effort, she kept her voice even, not letting any of her instinctive fright bleed through, and said, “SecUnit, I’d appreciate it if you put Gurathin down, please.”

It didn’t move, and for a split second, Ayda was terrified that it would keep Gurathin pinned, just to make a point. Then, it said to Gurathin, “I don’t like you. But I like the rest of them, and for some reason I don’t understand, they like you.” Then, it let him down, gently.

A warm feeling curled through her chest when SecUnit said it liked them (well, everyone but Gurathin, that was), but it was accompanied by the darker question of _Why_ , and a nagging feeling that they didn’t deserve its fondness.

Volescu put a hand on Gurathin’s shoulder and Overse moved towards him, but he brushed them off, moving to sit down beside Bharadwaj. Ayda looked quizzically at her, and she just lifted her eyebrows and took a sip from her coffee mug. It reminded Ayda that her coffee existed. She didn’t need it to wake her up anymore though, so she didn’t retrieve it. She figured she was excited enough already.

Everyone was quiet for a short moment. Ayda could read their subtle tells, and could tell most of them were on edge, a little afraid. It was up to her to break the silence, so Ayda took a deep breath and said, “SecUnit, can you keep HubSystem from accessing the security recordings from this room?” She hoped it didn’t know that SecUnit was rogue. There wasn’t much they knew about the hack, but now that she thought about it seriously, she realized that if they were going to survive this, there could be tactical advantages to SecUnit being rogue. It would be able to act outside the confines of its programming, in ways that the conspirers wouldn’t suspect… if they didn’t know it was rogue. If they did, the advantage had already slipped through her fingers.

It looked at her, but not quite. It was looking over her shoulder, like it did when she had visited it in the security ready room. That felt like a long time ago. It told her, “I cut it off when Gurathin said he found out my governor module was hacked, then deleted that section. I have the visual and audio recording transfer from SecSystem to HubSystem on a five second delay.”

She exhaled, feeling relieved. Then Ayda nodded, and tried to make eye contact, but its eyes evaded hers. She said, “Good. Without the governor module, you don’t have to obey our orders, or anybody’s orders. But that’s been the case the entire time we’ve been here.” She looked around at the others. Most of them still looked uneasy, but she could see the tension starting to drain from Volescu, Pin-Lee, and Arada. She looked back to SecUnit, and continued, “I would like you to remain part of our group, at least until we get off this planet and back to a place of safety. At that point, we can discuss what you’d like to do. But I swear to you, I won’t tell the company, or anyone outside this room, anything about you or the broken module.”

It looked away from her and at the floor, expression disbelieving. Or maybe it was resigned. Or forlorn. After a long moment, it told her, “Okay.”

It wasn’t particularly reassuring, and some of the others looked nervous again. If there was one thing Ayda was sure of now, it was that they were going to need SecUnit’s help to get out of this. It didn’t trust them—it had no reason to—but she couldn’t press the issue. She already had its assent, she didn’t want to push and provoke it to take it away.

So HubSystem hadn’t heard their conversation… but Gurathin had noticed in the feed that something was wrong. Something about SecUnit’s activity had made him suspicious, so maybe there was another way for whoever was attacking them to already know SecUnit was rogue. She felt cold again. She asked SecUnit, “Is there any chance HubSystem knows about your governor module?”

It looked uncomfortable, maybe a touch embarrassed, its gaze shifting over the floor. Ayda had to remind herself of the security cameras. There were at least two in this room. Just because SecUnit wasn’t looking, didn’t mean it didn’t see.

It said, “It might. I hacked HubSystem when we first arrived so it wouldn’t notice that the commands sent to the governor module weren’t always being followed, but if HubSystem’s been compromised by an outside agent, I don’t know if that worked. But HubSystem won’t know you know about it.”

That was a good point.

Ratthi interjected, “We have to shut it down, or it’s going to kill us.” Ayda gave him a sharp look, and he cringed, and said, “Sorry, I meant HubSystem.” Ayda didn’t take her gaze off him, and he squirmed uncomfortably. Good.

Apparently SecUnit forgave easier than Ayda did, because it said, “No offense.”

Bharadwaj asked uncertainly, “So we think HubSystem has been compromised by an outside agent. Can we be certain it’s not the company?”

Ayda already had about a hundred reasons why she thought it wasn’t the company, but SecUnit got in first. It asked, “Was DeltFall’s beacon triggered?”

Ratthi filled it in on their side trip to the DeltFall beacon, and how it had been sabotaged. It was one of many good reasons why it wasn’t the company. Everyone fell quiet when he was done, and Ayda knew they were all working it through their brains, probably calculating their (low) chances of surviving this.

It was Arada who broke the spell. She crossed the room, and patted SecUnit on the shoulder, standing on her toes to reach. It was a little awkward, but she told it with warmth and sincerity, “I’m sorry. This must be very upsetting. After what that other unit did to you… Are you all right?”

SecUnit’s expression turned pained and skittish, and it moved abruptly away from her, then walked into the corner, staring at the seam where the two walls met. Hunching its shoulders, it changed the topic quickly, “There were two other instances of attempted sabotage I’m aware of. When Hostile One attacked Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu and I went to render assistance, I received an abort command from HubSystem through my governor module. I thought it was a glitch, caused by the MedSystem emergency feed trying to override HubSystem.”

Ayda’s heart skipped a beat, then thudded in her chest. She hoped the others realized what that meant. SecUnit hadn’t just saved Volescu and Bharadwaj, it had been able to save them at all _because_ it was rogue. Ayda pictured an alternate reality where it had been any other SecUnit assigned to their survey, an alternate reality where the HubSystem had frozen that SecUnit, leaving Volescu and Bharadwaj to be mauled and devoured by the predator. It was like a knife in her chest.

SecUnit kept talking, “When Dr. Mensah was flying the little hopper to check out the nearest map anomaly, the autopilot cut out just as we were crossing over a mountain range.” Ayda remembered that moment, the little start she had felt when the controls went slack and limp in her hands as the autopilot died. She’d readily accepted it as a glitch, not an attempt on her life.

SecUnit paused, and then said, “HubSystem downloaded an upgrade packet for me from the satellite before we left for DeltFall. I didn’t apply it. You should probably look at what it would have told me to do.”

Ayda was getting an idea. Considering her last two ideas were visiting the unmapped area and going to DeltFall, it was probably another bad idea that would get them all killed. She looked at the back of SecUnit’s head appraisingly. It was a resource, a far greater one than she had realized before. It wouldn’t panic. It could interact with the systems more wholly and readily than any of them. It was canny. And now, it could be an equal partner.

She just hoped it wanted to be one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated in loving memory to the original 2000 word draft I had written of the first scene earlier this week which I accidentally fucking deleted. ❤️
> 
> Many thanks to [FlipSpring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlipSpring/pseuds/FlipSpring) for all the moral support after the Unfortunate Deletion, and the help pulling this chapter together and whipping it into a publishable state. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the story!


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